to see me. ‘What is that advertisement you are wearing on your chest?’
‘What advertisement?’
‘That advertisement on your sweater!’
‘This is my Liverpool FC top. I’ve supported them since I was five.’
‘What signifies “HITACHI”?’
‘The FA’ve changed the rules so football teams can wear sponsors’ logos. Hitachi’s an electronics firm. From Hong Kong, I think.’
‘So you pay an organization to be their advertisement? Allons donc. In clothes, in cuisine, the English have an irresistible urge to self-mutilation. But today you are late.’
Explaining the ins and outs of the Mr Blake Affair would’ve taken too long. I’ve lost count of how many times Mum and Dad and even Julia (when she’s feeling vicious)’ve said We’ll say no more about it, then dredge it up five minutes later. So I just told Madame Crommelynck I’ve got to do the washing-up on my own for a month to pay for something I’d broken, and it’d been a late lunch ’cause Mum’d forgotten to defrost the leg of lamb.
Madame Crommelynck got bored before I finished. She gestured at the bottle of wine on her pearly table. ‘Today you drink?’
‘I’m only allowed a thimbleful, on special occasions.’
‘If an audience with me does not qualify as “special”, pour my glass.’
(White wine smells of Granny Smiths, icy meths and tiny flowers.)
‘Always pour so the label is visible! If the wine is good, your drinker should know so. If the wine is bad, you deserve shame.’
I obeyed. A drop dribbled down the bottle’s neck.
‘So. Do I learn today your true name, or do I still give hospitality to a stranger who hides behind a ridiculous pseudonym?’
Hangman was even stopping me saying ‘Sorry’. I got so het up and desperate and angry I blurted out ‘Sorry!’ anyway, but so loud it sounded really rude.
‘Your elegant apology does not answer my question.’
I mumbled, ‘Jason Taylor,’ and wanted to cry.
‘Jay who? Pronounce it clearly! My ears are as old as me! I do not have microphones hidden to collect every little word!’
I hated my name. ‘Jason Taylor.’ Flavourless as chewed receipts.
‘If you are an “Adolf Coffin”, or a “Pius Broomhead”, I comprehend. But why hide “Jason Taylor” under an inaccessible symbolist and a Latin American revolutionary?’
My huh? must’ve shown.
‘Eliot! T. S.! Bolívar! Simón!’
‘“Eliot Bolivar” just sounded more…poetic.’
‘What is more poetic than ‘Jason’, an Hellenic hero? Who foundationed European literature if not the Ancient Greeks? Not Eliot’s coterie of thiefs of graves, I assure you! And what is a poet if he is not a tailor of words? Poets and tailors join what nobody else can join. Poets and tailors conceal their craft in their craft. No, I do not accept your answer. I believe the truth is, you use your pseudonym because your poetry is a shameful secret. I am correct?’
‘“Shameful” isn’t the exact word, exactly.’
‘Oh, so what is the exact word, exactly?’
‘Writing poetry’s,’ I looked around the solarium, but Madame Crommelynck’s got a tractor beam, ‘sort of…gay.’
‘“Gay”? A merry activity?’
This was hopeless. ‘Writing poems is…what creeps and poofters do.’
‘So you are one of these “creeps”?’
‘No.’
‘Then you are a “pooof-ter”, whatever one is?’
‘No!’
‘Then your logic is eluding me.’
‘If your dad’s a famous composer, and your mum’s an aristocrat, you can do things that you can’t do if your dad works at Greenland Supermarkets and if you go to a comprehensive school. Poetry’s one of those things.’
‘Aha! Truth! You are afraid the hairy barbarians will not accept you in their tribe if you write poetry.’
‘That’s more or less it, yeah…’
‘More? Or less? Which is the exact word, exactly?’
(She’s a pain sometimes.) ‘That’s it. Exactly.’
‘And you wish to become an hairy barbarian?’
‘I’m a kid. I’m thirteen. You said it’s a miserable age, being thirteen, and you’re right. If you don’t fit in, they make your life a misery. Like Floyd Chaceley or Nicholas Briar.’
‘Now you are talking like a real poet.’
‘I don’t understand it when you say stuff like that!’
(Mum’d’ve gone, Don’t talk to me in that tone of voice!)
‘I mean,’ Madame Crommelynck almost looked pleased, ‘you are entirely of your words.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘You are being quintessentially truthful.’
‘Anyone can be truthful.’
‘About superficialities, Jason, yes, is easy. About pain, no, is not. So you want a double life. One Jason Taylor who seeks approval of hairy barbarians. Another Jason Taylor is Eliot Bolivar who seeks approval of the literary world.’
‘Is that so impossible?’
‘If you wish to be a versifier,’ she whirlpooled her wine, ‘very possible. If you are a true artist,’ she schwurked wine round her mouth, ‘absolutely never. If you are not truthful to the